Sunday 19 December 2010

Dosbox and old games

So... my favourite game of all-time is still X-Com: terror the deep. I've been playing it off-and-on now since it first came out 15 years ago.

It is a game with extraordinarily long game-play time. Come to think of it, I think I still haven't actually completed a game yet... it takes months of gameplay to complete... but it's still fun enough that I like to play it anyway.

Now, the thing is, it's a really old game now - it's a DOS game that was able to be played on the then-new Win95... but it hasn't transferred well up the line. I've had to keep around an old laptop for the precise (and only) purpose of playing this game.

For obvious reasons (including the bulk of said ancient laptop), I did not bring that laptop with me to the UK. Which means that I've been deprived of my favourite game for some time.

Lately, however, I learned of Dosbox - which I can now rightly praise as an awesome DOS emulator that actually works on Linux (as well as other, lesser O/Ss). ;)

I had some issues with getting the game to play and save - before realising that I hadn't properly "installed" the game before trying to play it straight of the CD - and thus it didn't have write-privileges, causing it to fail to save a game... or to write the sound-file etc.

but after I figured that out - it's worked just fine. Awesome!

1 comment:

Craig Ambrose said...

Nice one Taryn, that's such a great game, although I haven't played it in years.